Cardon goes it alone vs. Flake

It’s hard branding yourself as the outsider when conservative renegades like Sarah Palin, Sen. Jim DeMint and FreedomWorks have all lined up in your opponent’s corner.

That’s the challenge wealthy real estate mogul Wil Cardon faces in Arizona’s Republican Senate primary, where much of the right has thrown its collective weight behind Rep. Jeff Flake.

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It marks a rare instance this cycle when the mainstream Republican flank is largely on the same side as their insurgent-minded agitators, leaving Cardon to wage this bid on his own.

“I don’t feel lonely at all,” Cardon told POLITICO in a recent interview in Washington. “I’m beholden to myself. I’d rather [be] beholden to myself than beholden to the Club for Growth or Washington money. [Flake’s] their lackey. He’s their water boy. They say, ‘Jump’; he says, ‘How high?’”

Nonetheless, those groups stoke attention, financial assistance and a sense of momentum. For a candidate like Flake — whose family is so deeply rooted in Arizona, the town Snowflake bears his name — it’s just icing on the cake.

Up against those long odds, under most scenarios, Cardon’s underdog candidacy would be summarily dismissed. But he holds two cards that are forcing Flake to pay attention: money and time.

Cardon has spent $7.5 million of his own on the race to date, including nearly $4 million on television and radio ads that began running in March.

The spots tout his private-sector experience and lament the failure of “career politicians … who have never created a job.”

The most recent one is the most biting, using Flake’s own words against him to underline the congressman’s broken self-imposed term-limit pledge.

“What can I say? I lied,” Flake said, chuckling in an interview with Reason TV. “I don’t know what else to say.”

It’s this type of exchange that Cardon hopes will undercut the image Flake is trying to project — as a principled, fearless conservative. With four weeks left until the Aug. 28 primary — which falls on the second day of the Republican National Convention — Cardon has ample time to build on that message.

“He’s not who he says he is. Those who know him best trust him least,” charged Cardon.

Flake’s team has taken notice, hitting the airwaves with its own high-octane spots. One blasts Cardon as a hypocrite on immigration for employing illegal workers at a chain of Subway stores.